The Upper East Side

The Upper East Side (UES) of Manhattan in New York City consists of five historic districts: the Carnegie Hill District, the Henderson Place District, the Metropolitan Museum of Art District, the Treadwell Farm District, and the Upper East Side District.

The architectural styles of the Upper East Side vary greatly and include spectacular representations of Beaux-Arts, Italian Renaissance Revival, Italianate, Neo-Grec, Queen Anne, and Romanesque Revival. These styles were originated by some of America’s most talented architects:  Carrere & Hastings, Ogden Codman, Delano & Aldrich, John Russell Pope, Henry Hobson Richardson, Horace Trumbauer, Warren & Wetmore, and McKim Mead & White.

The Upper East Side is famous for its museums.  The most famous section of UES is the Metropolitan Museum of Art Historic District.  In that district resides the “Museum Mile” — a stretch of 5th Avenue adjacent to Central Park — that draws crowds to cultural institutions such as:  Cooper Hewitt- Smithsonian Design Museum, El Museo del Barrio, The Frick Collection, Goethe House German Cultural Center, Jewish Museum,  Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of the City of New York,National Academy Museum, National Design Museum, Neue Galerie and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

UES is also famous for its mansions, including: the Jonathan Buckley Mansion, the James A. Burden Jr. Mansion, the Edward C. Converse Mansion, the Henry Cook Mansion, the Reginald DeKoven Mansion, the Issac D. Fletcher Mansion, the John Henry Hammond Mansion, the Lewis Gouveneur Morris Mansion, the Francis Palmer Mansion, the Henry T. Sloane Mansion, and the J.S. Uhlman Mansion.

Many of the above mentioned mansions and museums were originally owned and/or financed by John Jacob Astor, Andrew Carnegie, James Buchanan Duke, Henry Clay Frick, Solomon Robert Guggenheim, John Pierpont Morgan, Joseph John Pulitzer, John Davison Rockefeller, Lionel Walter Rothschild, Harry Ford Sinclair, Cornelius Vanderbilt, William Payne Whitney and Frank Winfield Woolworth.

My photograph – Taken on East 82nd Street between Madison Avenue & 5th Avenue – depicts the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the Metropolitan Museum of Art District in the winter of 1981.

This photograph is in the permanent collection of The Museum of the City of New York, and in the permanent collection of The New-York Historical Society Museum & Library.

Gerald Jude James Festa

Please Click Here to See Poster